Surrendering to the beauty of the choral polyphonal and acapella: ‘Ohio’ as you’ve never heard it before

My childhood friend Paul Sobanski wrote back in March that he associated a “few bands … with your place John; Nazareth, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper and Slade.” My place would be my parent’s bungalow suburban basement at 537 Nipigon St. in Oshawa, Ontario, circa 1972. While I still think Slade’s “In Like a Shot from My Gun” is a ripping good listen, while Humble Pie’s live cover of “Honky Tonk Woman” might at times sound better even than the Rolling Stones’ original, my typecast days (by myself, as much as friends) of having a main gig being a heavy rock fan are in some peril, or so it seems. Although if Sue Capon in a time shift were to drive her old orange Toyota Corolla atop Lake on the Mountain in Prince Edward County, like it was 1981 again, I might be tempted to perform a wee jig on her roof to the car radio blasting Loverboy’s “The Kid is Hot Tonight.” Many, many years later, I received an email from Sue in response to something she had read somewhere by me, asking, “Are you THAT John Barker?” Mea culpa.”

Blame it on choral polyphonal and a capella. Blame it on Ted Andkilde, another old friend, who back when I worked with him in the mid-1990s was a hell-driving, scrappy news photog, who never shied away from a good tussle for the money shot, or setting a land-speed record in a Kingston Whig-Standard white Chevy Lumina to the homicide scene. Last week, Ted posted on Facebook a YouTube link to “Ohio,” one of my favourite protest anthems, perhaps my favourite, of the 1970s. And a song, of course, I always associate with Neil Young. But this was not your father’s Neil Young version of “Ohio.” This was the Kent State University Chorale, in remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the events of May 4, 1970, memorializing them by performing an acapella version of “Ohio,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOibinIeyRg) arranged by Kent State Glauser School of Music alumna Brandy Kay Riha, and requested and approved by Young himself. In an unusual moment of succinctness, I told Ted, “Wow … few things leave me speechless. This did.” To which Ted replied: “Kinda blew me away. I’m not crying.”

Choral music is necessarily polyphonal – i.e., consisting of two or more autonomous vocal lines. It has a long history in European church music. A cappella is group or solo performance without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term a cappella, also spelled acapella, was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato style, a distinction no doubt better understood by my many smart and delightful musician friends (take a bow Jeanette Kimball, Suzanne Soble, Leigh Hall, Betsy Wrana, Wally Itson, Erin Taylor-Goble, Russell Peters, Kevin Lewis, Bruce Krentz, Serena Godmaire, Trevor Giesbrecht, Gareth Goossen, Helen Chapman, Joe Callahan, Jeannette Lupien, Steven Crooks, Ryan Flanagan, Danny Morris, Peter Frigo, et al.)

I might have been inclined to think of the Kent State University Chorale’s extraordinary rendition of “Ohio” as an exceptional exception to my long-held musical tastes, but for the fact that five days later I came across Thunder Bay, Ontario musician, singer, and songwriter Rodney Brown’s Facebook post linking to a YouTube video from 2018 of the Manitoba’s Pembina Trails Voices singers performing Ian Tamblyn’s 2007 classic “Woodsmoke and Oranges,” arranged by Rebecca Campbell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqL4WqBKNBc). How could I not give it a listen? Brown, who I saw perform once at a Home Routes concert in October 2009 in the basement Bijou Room of the Thompson Public Library, and Tamblyn, who I haven’t seen perform in person, but both for my money, two of old Fort William’s finest Bards of Superior.

“By woodsmoke and oranges, path of old canoe,
I would course the inland ocean to be back to you.
No matter where I go to, it’s always home again
To the rugged northern shore and the days of sun and wind.
We nosed her in by Pukaskwa, out for fifteen days,
To put paddle and the spirit at the mercy of the waves.
The wanigans were loaded down and a gift left on the shore,
For it’s best if we surrender to the rugged northern shore.
In the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon,
There’s something in this country that’s a part of me and you.
The waves smashed the smoky cliffs of Old Woman Bay,
Where we fought against the backswell and then were on our way.
I could speak to you of spirit – by the vision pits we saw them
Walk the agate beaches of the mighty Gargantua.
I have turned my back upon these things, tried to deny
The coastline of my dreams, but it turns me by and by.

“It tossed the mighty ship around, smashed the lighthouse door,
Sends a shiver up my spine, oh the rugged northern shore.
In the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon
There’s something ’bout this country that’s a part of me and you.”

With apologies for shamelessly “borrowing” a line from Bob Dylan, but perhaps something is “Blowin’ in the Wind” of Northern Manitoba’s boreal forest here at 55.7433° N latitude.

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Home Routes returns Feb. 6 after its 2½-month Christmas hiatus with St. John’s traditional folk singer and acoustic guitarist Matthew Byrne

Anyone in Thompson from Down East? How about more exactly “The Rock” a.k.a. Newfoundland and Labrador? Eh b’y, thought so.

Matthew Byrne, a traditional folk singer and acoustic guitarist, gets the kitchen party started next Friday night for the second half of Home Routes’ sixth season in Thompson over at Tim and Jean Cameron’s place at 206 Campbell Dr. Show time is 7:15 p.m. Feb.6 and tickets are $20 at the door and the coffee will be on. For more information give Tim or Jean a call at 204-677-3574 or send them an e-mail at: cameron8@mymts.net

Tim and Jean Cameron moved here from Ashern three years ago. The Camerons were also Home Routes hosts in Ashern for three years before coming here. Tim’s day job is as a uniformed armed peace officer with Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship – the province’s chief natural resource officer. Jean Cameron is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) branch manager here. Tim is also known as a guitar-playing folkie from the late 1980s, whose talents were first on display here long ago at the old Thompson Folk Festival, during an earlier stint working and living here in his 20s. He’s even been known to pick up an acoustic guitar the odd time at the end of a Home Routes concert here and join the performer and whoever else wants to jam in keeping the kitchen party cooking awhile longer.

Home Routes is coming off its traditional 2½-month Christmas hiatus after three fall shows, which featured Allan Fraser and Marianne Girard last Nov. 20; Jolene Higgins, better known by many perhaps by her stage name of “Little Miss Higgins” on Oct. 22; and Deep Cove, Nova Scotia area country bluesman Morgan Davis, who kicked off season six here on the Borealis Trail Sept. 23.  Other stops on the Borealis Trail beside Thompson include Flin Flon, The Pas and Minitonas and Swan River Valley in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan, Buena Vista, Annaheim, Prince Albert, Napatak, Melfort and Greenwater Lake Provincial Park. Other circuits on Home Routes include the Yukon Trail; Salmon-Berry in British Columbia; Cherry Bomb and Blue Moon in British Columbia and Alberta; Chautauqua Trail in Saskatchewan and Alberta; CCN SK in Saskatchewan; Central Plains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Jeanne Bernardin in Manitoba, Agassiz in Manitoba and Ontario; Estelle-Klein in Ontario and Québec and the Maritimes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Byrne was born into a family of  Placentia Bay, Newfoundland music makers and his repertoire is heavily influenced by that singing tradition that thrives on the two basic elements of the song – the weaving of a great story with a beautiful melody. His parents moved from Placentia Bay to St. John’s during the period of the so-called “No Great Future” and other government resettlements where 307 communities were abandoned between 1946 and 1975 and more than 28,000 people relocated in a farbed up bid to bring rural residents from fishing communities in danger of financial collapse to the capital for some urban modernization with its requisite central regulation.

Byrne’s first album, Ballads, was released in 2011. His most recent album, Hearts & Heroes, was released last May 31.

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Back roads and country music: Jimmy Rankin and Jolene ‘Little Miss’ Higgins both Thomspson, Manitoba-bound this fall

Nokomis, Saskatchewan country blues performer Jolene Higgins, better known by many perhaps by her stage name of “Little Miss Higgins,” will be in Thompson Oct. 22 for a 7:30  p.m. show, marking the second Home Routes concert of season six here – and the second consecutive country blues artist to perform, as this year’s lineup kicked off Sept. 23 with Deep Cove, Nova Scotia area country bluesman Morgan Davis.

Home Routes house concerts are at  Tim and Jean Cameron’s place at 206 Campbell Dr. Tickets are $20 at the door and the coffee will be on, says Tim Cameron, now in his third season of organizing Thompson stops on the tour. For more information give Tim or Jean a call at 204-677-3574 or send them an e-mail at: cameron8@mymts.net

All the money goes to the performers, some of whom would likely never pass through Thompson without the concert series. Performers typically do 11 shows in 14 days at their stops along Home Routes Borealis Trail circuit in Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which Thompson is part of . Other stops on the Borealis Trail beside Thompson include Flin Flon, The Pas and Minitonas and Swan River Valley in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan, Buena Vista, Annaheim, Prince Albert, Napatak, Melfort and Greenwater Lake Provincial Park. Other circuits on Home Routes include the Yukon Trail; Salmon-Berry in British Columbia; Cherry Bomb and Blue Moon in British Columbia and Alberta; Chautauqua Trail in Saskatchewan and Alberta; CCN SK in Saskatchewan; Central Plains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Jeanne Bernardin in Manitoba, Agassiz in Manitoba and Ontario; Estelle-Klein in Ontario and Québec and the Maritimes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Brooks, Alberta-born Higgins was raised in Independence, Kansas, named in commemoration of the July 4, 1776 United States Declaration of Independence.  For her newest release, Bison Ranch Recording Sessions, Higgins teamed up with a quintet of musicians she calls the “Winnipeg Five”   –  Jimmie James McKee on trumpet, Eric Lemoine on banjo and pedal steel, Blake Thomson on guitar, Patrick Alexandre Leclerc on upright bass and Evan Friesen on drums. All five of them sing harmonies.

Also coming to Thompson 2½ weeks after Higgins is Mabou, Nova Scotia country and folk legend Jimmy Rankin, who first came to public acclaim as a member of the famed Celtic Rankin Family, but is also well-established over the last 15 years as a solo artist. While The Rankin Family stopped performing a group after a decade in September 1999, smaller versions still reunite from time-to-time and these days it is made up of Jimmy and his sisters, Cookie and Heather Rankin. Three members of The Rankin Family have died over the last decade and half, including Raylene, who died of breast cancer in 2012; Geraldine, who died in  2007, the result of a brain aneurysm, and John Morris Rankin, killed in a car accident on Cape Breton Island in 2000 when the  truck he was driving to a hockey game plunged off a cliff into the Gulf of St. Lawrence after he swerved to avoid a pile of salt on the highway.

Jimmy Rankin, now 50,  will be performing an acoustic show in Thompson Nov. 8 at the Letkemann Theatre at R.D. Parker Collegiate. Show time is 8 p.m. and tickets are $25. The City of Thompson, which used to have a four or five-concert series every fall and winter, is bringing Rankin in. Thompson is the last stop on Rankin’s “Back Road” tour in support of his latest album, Back Road Paradise, although he is also set to perform as a guest, along with Ian Sherwood, at  Nova Scotia singer-songwriter Rachel MacLean’s “Christmas With Friends” show Dec. 7 at  University Hall at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Rankin’s “Back Road” tour kicks off at Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium in Brandon Oct. 19.

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Season six: Home Routes House Concert tonight in Thompson with Deep Cove, Nova Scotia area country bluesman Morgan Davis

Country bluesman Morgan Davis is in Thompson tonight for a 7:30 p.m. show to kick-off season six of Home Routes house concerts at  Tim and Jean Cameron’s place at 206 Campbell Dr. Tickets are $20 at the door and the coffee will be on, says Tim Cameron, now in his third season of organizing Thompson stops on the tour. For more information give Tim or Jean a call at 204-677-3574 or send them an e-mail at: cameron8@mymts.net

Home Routes, then hosted by Lisa Evasiuk, a youth counsellor for school-based programs for the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba in Thompson, had at its original venue Thompson venue in the Basement Bijou at Thompson Public Library, kicking off in here on Sept. 22, 2009 with a show by Corin Raymond and Sean Cotton, who make up The Undesirables. Today marks five years and a day since Home Routes arrived in Thompson. Evasiuk, originally from Dauphin, had lived here since 1985, but retired and left town in August 2012 to travel the world, although there have been occasional sightings of her locally over the last two years on a visit back.

All the money goes to the performers, some of whom would likely never pass through Thompson without the concert series. Performers typically do 11 shows in 14 days at their stops along Home Routes Borealis Trail circuit in Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which Thompson is part of . Other stops on the Borealis Trail beside Thompson include Flin Flon, The Pas and Minitonas and Swan River Valley in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan, Buena Vista, Annaheim, Prince Albert, Napatak, Melfort and Greenwater Lake Provincial Park. Other circuits on Home Routes include the Yukon Trail; Salmon-Berry in British Columbia; Cherry Bomb and Blue Moon in British Columbia and Alberta; Chautauqua Trail in Saskatchewan and Alberta; CCN SK in Saskatchewan; Central Plains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Jeanne Bernardin in Manitoba, Agassiz in Manitoba and Ontario; Estelle-Klein in Ontario and Québec and the Maritimes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Davis “called last night from The Pas and is having a great time on the tour. He is looking forward to his Thompson concert tonight,” Cameron said in an e-mail this morning. Davis, a Nova Scotia resident since 2001 and Juno award-winner is here to bring his brand of country blues to Northern Manitoba. Davis lives north of Deep Cove, on the Aspotogan Peninsula, along the Lighthouse Route of Nova Scotia’s South Shore.The Aspotogan Peninsula is in the eastern part of Lunenburg County, situated between St. Margarets Bay in the east from Mahone Bay in the west.  Davis is a regular weekend performer at the legendary Bearly’s House of Blues and Ribs, established in 1987, on Barrington Street in south end downtown Halifax.

Two more Home Routes house concerts follow at the Cameron’s place in October and November and then resume in February following a Christmas holiday hiatus.

Tim and Jean Cameron moved here from Ashern three years ago. The Camerons were also Home Routes hosts in Ashern for three years before coming here. Tim’s day job is as a uniformed armed peace officer with Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship – the province’s chief natural resource officer. Jean Cameron is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) branch manager here.

Tim is also known as a guitar-playing folkie from the late 1980s, whose talents were on display at the long-defunct Thompson Folk Festival, during an earlier stint working and living here in his 20s. Tim picked up a guitar for a few songs after the Randy Noojin show last Nov. 22, joining local musician Russell Peters and Noojin for a Hank Williams kitchen party sing-along. Attendance for shows in their mobile home venue over the last two years ranged from a low of 22 to a very cozy, getting-to-know-you better 45.

Originally from Detroit, Davis grew up listening to a mix of rhythm and blues and the likes of Jimmy Reed, Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. He later moved to California with his family, and then in 1968 left for Canada, where he lived at the now-iconic counter-culture Rochdale College, Toronto’s mecca for the subculture of the late 1960s, where he immersed himself in the study of Delta Blues, especially the music of Robert Johnson, he says.

It was in the early 1970’s Toronto music scene that Davis  made the journey from apprentice to musical journeyman, having the opportunity to see and play with such legendary performers as Bukka White, Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim, Snooky Pryor, Hubert Sumlin, and John Hammond, who, he says, were “encouraging supporters.”

Davis hit the road with the Rhythm Rockets, The Knights of The Mystic Sea, and David Wilcox’s first band, David Wilcox and the Teddy Bears, before eventually forming his own trio. He has since performed in full bands, trios and mainly as a solo artist. Over the years, Davis has opened for Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Hammond, Albert Collins and Eric Bibb.

Home Routes Inc. (also known as Home Routes/Chemin Chez Nous) is a national non-profit arts organization incorporated in February 2007 to create new performance opportunities for Canadian musicians and audiences, in the homes of volunteer house concert presenters organized in touring circuits through rural and urban, French and English communities in Canada. A national volunteer board of directors operates the arts-service and arts-delivery organization, along with a small professional staff in Winnipeg and more than 200 volunteer house concert hosts across Canada.

Home Routes says it “owes its existence to the theoretical footprint of the Chautauqua travelling shows of the late 19th and 20th century.”

The Chautauqua movement was named after the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly founded in New York State in 1874 as an educational experiment in out-of-school, vacation learning. It was broadened almost immediately beyond courses for Sunday school teachers to include academic subjects, music, art and physical education.

“In the time before radio the Chautauqua was the cultural conduit between the urban east and the rest of North America. Traveling by horse and wagon, the Chautauqua was ‘The Medicine Show’ bringing the latest in show tunes, science, the gospel, fashion, snake oil and whatever was the latest invention for the modern kitchen. Almost every community had a ‘Chautauqua Society’ laying the groundwork locally and producing the show. The arrival in any rural community of the annual Chautauqua was a big event that was celebrated across the continent and even today, almost a hundred years later, the word “Chautauqua” still reverberates in existing concert venues and in cultural and educational institutions.

The travelling shows disappeared as radio and the movies grew in prominence and those mini extravaganzas became a wistful lingering memory in North American history.

“The modern folk music ‘House Concert’ was born out of necessity in the early 1950’s just at the time when the folk ‘boom’ began. In 1952 The Weavers had a number one radio hit with Leadbelly’s ‘Irene Goodnight’ and the song ignited a mini folk song revival; suddenly folk music was popular. City people started buying banjo’s and guitars and fiddles and began to learn the folklore that country people were born with and they began to create new songs about the world as they saw it then and ever since. There simply weren’t enough places to play for all the young and enthusiastic men and women who decided that being folk musicians was for them and so the grass roots invented a grass roots solution to the problem. People discovered that their living rooms made fine venues for acoustic music and began what has turned out to be a long tradition of home based intimate presentations of folk music.

What has been consistent has been the extraordinary level of excellence.

“Home Routes is a rough amalgam of these two historical approaches formulated and delivered with respect for all the work that went before we came along and re-kindled these excellent ideas. The volunteer hosts, like the Chautauqua Societies before them, play the role of community cultural animator. The musicians, like musicians and vaudevillians have for all time, get to work and play for these very special networks of vibrant committed people. The inter relationship between performer and host provides community after community with access to a brilliant array of artists. There is a trade off inherent between the parties, the artist brings their musical skills and the host contributes the effort to bring out an audience. One doesn’t work without the other. The thought of “circuits” of house concerts flows logically from the experience of the Chautauqua and equally from the current needs of the communities and of the artists.”

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